


Summer Rain

by Ilthit



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Childbirth, F/F, Pregnancy, Sexual Harassment, Trans Character, implied divine birth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:00:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25182145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ilthit/pseuds/Ilthit
Summary: Ensi would rather get pregnant by the wind than marry.
Relationships: Ensi Hotakainen/F!Ukko-Pekka
Comments: 5
Kudos: 3
Collections: Rule 63 Exchange 2020





	Summer Rain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elleth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elleth/gifts).



The storm came on in the late morning. The sky had been grey but bright before the heavy clouds rolled in like an early dusk, plunging the inside of the cabin into darkness. Aino piled up the dishes in their bucket and flicked a curtain to peer up at the last sliver of blue sky in the horizon before it, too, was swallowed up. Heavy rain drops beat the window. Soon enough—yes, there it was, the roll of thunder like stones being rolled down a gutter. 

They never lasted long, these storms. She’d finish the dishes later rather than risk being drenched when the wind drove the rainfall into the porch. 

“Ensi?” she called into main room. Her little girl was wiry but willful and she didn’t want her catching a chill running around in the downpour. She found Ensi staring out the window towards the water, where raindrops made craters on the lake’s surface. Aino’s skin prickled. “You don’t… see anything out there, do you, darling?” 

Ensi shook her head without turning, and Aino nodded. She felt it less and less, this helpless guilt over what her daughter had turned out to be; the burden Aino ultimately could never carry for her. It was what it was.

-

Ensi stared into the storm, trying to catch the flash of lightning and count the seconds between it and the rumbling. There—a flicker, and another. She closed her eyes and counted. 

She could see the other world this way. Instead of the bench-bed, she was sitting curled up on a boulder on the island in her dreams, her luonto resting beside her. The wolf stared out across the dark waters too, her eyes pricked up. The roll came then, like a drumbeat, a promise, a message she could almost understand. 

\- 

“You need to stop following me around.”

Ensi was fifteen now, and Kauko was sixteen, and even though they were practically grown-ups he still seemed to think that one year’s difference made him the boss of her. “I’m not following you,” he said, raising his eyebrows. “We’re going the same way.” 

Ensi stopped in her tracks and gave him a flat stare. He stopped beside her. “What? I’m just walking. Why are you like that?”

Why was she like that? Why did he keep showing up whenever she was picking berries alone on the outskirts of the island? Why did his friends always laugh when he parted from them to swagger in her direction? Why had he tried to hold her hand that one time? Only, if she said anything about it directly, she already knew he’d say she was imagining things, and really it was _she_ who fancied _him_.

“I don’t want to see you. I don’t want to talk to you. I don’t want to hear you talk. Please leave and don’t even look at me again.”

“That’s stupid. I didn’t do anything to you.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“You—” he said, pointing a finger at her, “—are a bitch, and if you don’t change, you’re never going to have a boyfriend.”

“Good,” said Ensi. 

“You’ll never get married.”

“ _Good_.”

“You’ll never have any kids, either. Not once I tell everybody what you’re really like!”

“If I have to have kids, I’d rather get pregnant by the wind!” Ensi’s patience snapped at the last word, which became a screech, like a wild bird’s call. 

The clouds in the horizon pushed closer, slowly rolling out their blanket towards Saimaa. 

-

Ensi was thirty-three. 

“That’s a triple positive,” said the healer, nodding and sighing. She showed Ensi the two cups. Each had changed colour. The dandelion leaves, too, had developed red spots. “Did your magic tell you?”

“My dreams did, yes.” As had the nausea, the lack of blood on the appointed day, and the fact that she could no longer abide the sight of eggs. 

“Well, you’ve been to births, you know what’s in store. Just stay away from beer and take it easy for now. Don’t work too hard. Come and see me if there’s a sudden loss of blood. And start making plans.” She raised her brows, but stopped short of actually asking if Ensi was going to have anyone to raise her baby with. 

Others wouldn’t be so tactful, she knew. 

-

Ensi had had lovers over the years, of a sort. Most of them faded into acquaintances, or had never really exited that sphere in the first place; others were friends, and never cared to identify themselves as anything other than that. Part of the reason, she supposed, was that none of them were men. There wouldn’t be any marriages or children on the table, even if they got along well enough. 

She could marry someone, she supposed, if she fell deeply enough in love, but she never had. Marriage for love alone was an old-fashioned concept, something her parents had talked about. Ensi had always had more important things to think about. 

“So, who’s the father?” asked Matti. He was one of her braver friends, willing to say what wasn’t really appropriate to say but was on everyone’s mind; besides, half their friends assumed it was him. 

“The wind,” said Ensi, loud enough for the next table to hear, and it was a long time before anyone asked again. 

-

Summer would be coming to a close soon. Pregnant or not, it was time for Ensi’s last scouting trip of the year. Her belly had not really changed yet, and in any case under her loose coat no-one would be able to tell. But news had traveled, and even the scouts they met up with from the other villages gave her their congratulations. She was one of the first mages and one of the first people proven immune to the illness. Other mages had had talented children before. She could be carrying something very precious. 

But she was needed, so out she went on her usual rounds, rifle strapped to her back and her traps and knives ready. The lake system in her area was spotted by small islands, quick to clear for beasts or mark for a cleansing crew to take care of, and they always took up the first part of her duties. After that she ventured out into the larger islands, and finally finished with a shore patrol of the mainland. 

You weren’t really supposed to dock there. She had not been supposed to dock there in July, either. 

She tied up her boat, took out her knife and followed the overgrown footpath through the thicket and up the rising ground, earth packed on top of bare rock thrusting from the water. Where rain had eroded it, the scarred stone shone through. There was no path here that she could see among the undergrowth of grasses, roots, herbs and moss. Something told her she’d find the camp up there anyway. 

And then she smelled the smoke. It rose up in a slow, narrow billow at the top of the naked hill, only just visible against the white sky. 

She stopped at the edge of the trees and scoped the hill. She took in the moose-skin tent, the charms hung about on sticks around the area, the rocks gathered around the campfire. Logs in that same criss-cross formation she had noted in July. The same banged-up tin kettle. 

Rauni-Pihla was bent over a wooden tray, gutting fish with practiced motions, half turned away. That shock of reddish-blonde hair struck through with white, the wide shoulders and tapering waist, the long thin legs bent under her, her skirts bunched up around her waist were just as Ensi remembered. It was as if she had never left, and had only moved her camp from the east side of the hill to the west, to catch the last rays of the sun. 

The last Ensi had seen her, her skin had been silver under the stars, pale and beautiful and bare save for the gleam of sweat, a feast laid out just for her and for the mosquitoes. The tent had been dark, once they’d pulled the flap closed over the night. In the morning Rauni-Pihla had gone, with just a pot of fresh porridge left under a cover on the fireplace, hanging over embers that hissed and smoked as raindrops fell on them.

The rain that morning had felt like kisses, so light and gentle, and Ensi’s body had like a new and fresh thing.

“Come on up,” called the hunter. Ensi could swear she had made no sound, but Rauni-Pihla turned to her, smiled and beckoned. “Help me fry this pike.” 

Fish fried fresh on a bit of fat and herbs tasted very good indeed, and Ensi said so as she took a bite, the first words she’d spoken since she’d arrived. 

“You’re pregnant,” Rauni-Pihla remarked, now conversation had been properly initiated. 

“So you’ve heard about it, too?”

“The birds told me. They tell me you’re taking good care of yourself, too. That’s good. Your family will be strong.”

“I will make sure of it,” Ensi snapped. It had not escaped her that Rauni-Pihla referred to the child as Ensi’s. Ensi’s, and not her own, even though she was the only person of any sex who had ever spilled seed inside Ensi; the only other person who could have claimed her child as her own. 

In truth Ensi was not sure if she had been dreading or longing for that possibility. She had no inclination for motherhood. She never had. 

She grunted and bit into more fish. It was difficult to stay angry with the taste of fried fish and butter in your mouth. Then Rauni-Pihla pushed a cup of blueberry juice in her hand, and all was forgiven. 

-

“It’s a bad omen,” said Hilja, folding up another towel in the changing room. It had been raining since morning, and the day had only gotten darker as Ensi’s contractions had started coming in more frequently. The sauna was warm, aired out already, with plenty of warm water standing by, and the healer singing spells quietly in the porch between drags of her pipe. There was no hurry yet. Ensi roamed the room, occasionally grasping a bench for support as a contraction wracked her body. 

“No, it’s not,” she said through gritted teeth, and looked out the small, dark window to the misty downpour of April rain.

She had felt it on her face that morning when it had first come in, and every drop had felt like love. 


End file.
